Through The Garden Gate
July—The Bugs Have Arrived! By Leslie Watkins Gardens are looking lush and beautiful and attracting plenty of admiring glances from garden tour groups and now, pests. Cabbage white butterflies, tomato hornworms, red lily leaf beetles, Japanese beetles, slugs and snails to name a few. Hand picking, applying nontoxic pesticides, and setting baits are all useful […]
Through the Garden Gate
by Leslie Watkins “What is one to say about June, the time of perfect young summer, the fulfillment of the promise of the earlier months and with as yet no sign to remind one that its fresh young beauty will ever fade”. –Gertrude Jekyll, On Gardening If you have been keeping on top of your gardens […]
Through the Garden Gate
May, Hoo-ray! by Leslie Watkins Well, things are looking up! Warmer days and sunshine beckon us outside to poke about the garden, picking up litter and rearranging frost-heaved plants and stones. Spring peepers are welcoming warmer temperatures and the honeybees are flying. Time to get busy. Cold-hardy transplants can go into the vegetable garden in […]
Through the Garden Gate
April, Time to Get Started By Leslie Watkins As the snow melts and the ground thaws, you may start thinking about the pleasures of having a kitchen garden outside your door. Thoughts of sun-ripened tomatoes and freshly picked basil may be hard to imagine after this past winter, but those days will come. Vegetable gardening […]
Zone 4
Goutweed Blues By Kristin Pizzica My obsession with goutweed is a direct result of the countless hours I have spent hunched over in gardens removing it one stem at a time. One fall, I ran a test and dug up a section of the weed, making sure to take the roots with it. Then I […]
Zone 4
Seasonal Care For The Cultivated Landscape By Martha Klein Gardeners talk about “putting the garden to bed” for winter, an apt metaphor for the living yet subdued garden tucked under its winter blanket of straw and mulch. Autumn is the time to foster soil conditions that lead to healthy spring plants. Fall yard and garden […]
